“Socialism,” said Richard John Neuhaus, “is the religion people get when they lose their religion.” While that might have been true in Neuhaus’s day, many young Christians are now attempting to have their faith and socialism too.
I never got the opportunity to meet Fr. Neuhaus. He died in January 2009, two months before I started working as the web editor at the magazine he founded, First Things. I suspect, though, that the staunch advocate of democratic capitalism would be surprised and dismayed to find his publication now has editors who identify as socialist and columnists who claim capitalism is inimical to Christianity.
I’d also be curious to hear what he thought of the baffling article published yesterday in his magazine in which Andrew Strain claims a truly free market is as mythical as a unicorn. I loathe to appear to be picking on Mr. Strain, but by analyzing his essay we can see a common pattern that is emerging, even in once conservative publications: writers who don’t know the first thing about free markets explaining why they are inferior to socialist policies.